Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
November 25, 1823 The Royal Suspension Chain Pier in Brighton on England’s southeastern coast was opened. This pier was the first major one to be built at that seaside resort. Widely known as the Chain Pier, it was designed by civil engineer (and Royal Navy veteran) Samuel Brown (1776-1852). Brown was a trailblazer when it... Continue Reading →
April 18, 1905 A passenger train crossed a five-span cantilever truss bridge built to carry train traffic across the Mississippi River between the community of Illmo (now part of Scott City) in Missouri and the village of Thebes, Illinois. This train was the first one to cross the Thebes Bridge, thereby (in the words of... Continue Reading →
August 6, 2018 In northern India, the Sir M. Vishweshwaraiah Moti Bagh station on the Delhi Metro’s Pink Lane was officially opened. The Delhi Metro is a mass rapid transit system serving the city and union territory of Delhi and also the nearby cities of Faridabad, Gurgaon, Noida, and Ghaziabad in India’s National Capital Region.... Continue Reading →
May 24, 1915 Civil engineer Arthur Hale applied for a patent for his design of a road interchange focused on facilitating the flow of automobile traffic. Hale, who resided in the village of Rowlandsville in Maryland, characterized this design as one that contained “certain new and useful improvements in street crossings.” Hale’s proposed interchange consisted... Continue Reading →
September 18, 1896 Edward Orpen Moriarty, a civil engineer who had undertaken a wide range of public works projects across the globe, died in the community of Southsea within the city and unitary authority of Portsmouth in southeastern England. He was 71. Moriarty was born on October 11, 1824, in County Kerry in southwestern Ireland.... Continue Reading →
March 13, 1883 Civil engineer Clifford Milburn Holland was born in the town of Somerset, Massachusetts. His career would encompass construction on several tunnels in and around New York City. His crowning achievement when it came to those tunnels involved the one that now bears his name: the Holland Tunnel, which was built under the Hudson... Continue Reading →
January 27, 1861 Ralph Modjeski, a civil engineer who achieved acclaim for his wide range of bridge design and construction projects, was born in the town of Bochnia in the Austrian Empire (in what is now Poland). Modjeski immigrated to the United States in 1878. He became an American citizen five years later. Modjeski’s first major... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 